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A Beautiful Mind
The John Nash of Nasar's biography, while less likable, is far more fascinating and multidimensional than his cinematic counterpart; he is a draft dodger, a vicious prankster (one practical joke of Nash's involved filling a light fixture with water, which could have electrocuted a hapless victim when he turned on the light), and an arrogant braggart.
Hollywood has whitewashed much from Nash's life; besides working to dodge the Korean War draft out of fears that it would hurt his career, Nash fathered an illegitimate son whom he refused to help care for, despite the fact that his own circumstances were far better than those of the child's mother. The woman he married, Alicia Larde, is portrayed in the film as the one and only love of Nash's life; no mention is made of their 1963 divorce. (Nearly forty years later, the couple remarried.) To read Nasar's biography is to discover fascinating episodes like Nash's stint in Europe, when he attempted several times to renounce his American citizenship and obtain political asylum, and his encounters with fellow patient and Pulitzer prizewinning poet Robert Lowell in a Massachusetts mental hospital.
The book is as absorbing a history lesson as it is a story; Nasar sets Nash's life beautifully in the context of his time. Nash's bisexuality, for example, was much more of an issue then than it would be now; while today many areas have laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation, in 1954 not only was it legal for employers to dismiss a homosexual employee, but any evidence of homosexuality was sufficient grounds to deprive a government employee of security clearance. Later, the reader learns of many once-credited treatments for mental illness, like insulin injections (thought to deprive the brain of sugar and thus kill off defective brain cells), colonic irrigation, and even "fever therapy," given by inoculating patients with malaria or typhoid. Nasar's description of the politics by which Nobel prizes are awarded, a process purposely shrouded in mystery by the various committees involved, is a particularly fascinating read. Her inclusion of these and other details paints a rich historical picture that's a pleasure to read.
The one thing missing from A Beautiful Mind is, of course, the voice of John Nash himself. Where possible, Nasar plucked quotes from his writings and the recollections of friends and colleagues, but Nash himself maintained, as he put it to a New York Times reporter, "a position of Swiss neutrality" toward his biographer. Throughout the extraordinary story of Nash's life -- his rapid rise to fame, his loves, his illness, his disappearance for decades from the academic community, and his recognition at last as a Nobel laureate, one wants to ask him, "What were you thinking?" Unfortunately, it's a question Nasar was unable to answer.
One true merit of the movie, so highly altered from Nash's real story (and, considered apart from the facts, it is both moving and interesting), is that it will undoubtedly inspire many to pick up Nasar's beautifully written biography. It's time to meet the real John Nash.
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I saw the movie, and it got me wondering about the real John Forbes Nash, Jr. He's got a short (but interesting) online autobiography here, although he skips over his schizophrenic years and focuses on his academic work.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
My girlfriend's father is an economics professor, and was excited to see him speak this year. It seems, however, that he is a shadow of what he once was.
Apparently, his presentation was not terribly insightful. And when asked by an audience member about some of his famous work, he responded that he "doesn't remember any of that anymore."
The entire event was very awkward for everyone in attendance. Here is a man who made some brilliant discoveries in his heyday that are very useful in game theory and economics. People come to hear him speak and it only displays how his mind has gone-- he can't even relive the old glory.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Yeah the movie was too much of a "feel good" one for me to believe that it was all true. So I did some reading on the net about him and found out about how RAND fired him for suspected homosexuality, and his illegitimate son.
I also thought the movie portrayed him a little too "Forrest Gumpish" like he was retarded in some way but they never made any reference to it.
The bad thing thing was how the movie strung you along to believe that he was actually sane the whole time. Even the whole scene where Nash was being shot at while speeding along in the car. I know its hard to imagine, but it they made it seem real enough.
I guess when you question how a scizophrenic person can imagine such strange things and believe them, I think about when humans dream. How many strange dreams have you had that were totally unbelievable yet you didn't question them in the dream? A person with this disorder just has part of their dreams occurring during the day while awake.
I guess if they told the real story of John Nash, you'd not like him as much, and Russle Crowe wouldn't be getting so many accolades for this movie if he portrayed John Nash as a bisexual, draft dodging, dead-beat dad.
Indeed, it is an excellent biography, and this review is right on target: the Nash of the book is far more multidimensional and interesting than any Hollywood creation could be.
Something the book draws out wonderfully is the tension between Nash's tremendous virtue as a thinker, and the fact that he was a really dislikable person for much of his life. His attitude generally seemed to be that his intelligence was the sole measure of his merit as a human being, and should open the doors of the world to him regardless of whether or not he was a pleasant or decent person. The places where he was right and wrong about this -- and how that changed during the "lost years" of schizophrenia -- is a fascinating cautionary tale for all of us fringy geeky types, whether fighting mental illness or not.
After two weeks of reading praise in the reviews, I finally went to see the movie. I must say I didn't like it, possibly because it hits too close to home.
Watching Nash's life suddenly reveal itself as an empty shell, a madman's delusion, was too painful. It creeped me out so much that I lost interest in the rest of the film and the recovery to normal life that he made. I guess I became afraid of what it would be like to lose control of your mind in this manner, a very disturbing perspective.
Needless to say, beyond the amount forced upon me by the movie, I could not sympathize with the character much because of the pride and prejudice and contempt and even, I would say, malice in his competitiveness (while he had it), that he touts.
To summarize, I felt sorry for him, but even more repulsed by him, and thus by the movie.
As for his portrayal as a mathematician, it had both parts that I liked and those that I didn't. There wasn't much specifics to it though, predictably.
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His presentations were pretty much always like that, even before the schizophrenia. He was a terrible speaker, disorganized and unclear, who gave the impression of babbling nonsense off the top of his head. He was also a terrible teacher, who bored his students out of their skulls. His presentations always made other mathematicians skeptical that he was actually generating any valid ideas at all -- until he managed to get them down on paper, and proved himself a genius.
So I'm not sure that a bumbling presentation now is a sign that "his mind has gone".
This is a great movie from what I hear, but it makes one simple mistake:
It makes people with mental illness think they can also be like Nash and 'fight back'.
This isn't the case, and gives people an unrealistic look into the life of someone who is mentally ill. As an advocate, I find it kind of hard when the public is shown a movie like this. They think... "why can't `they` all do like he did?"
A mistake indeed. Not that a story where someone overcomes a great hurdle is bad, but it's dangerous in this case.
Next movie: A person who has AIDS, but fights it and somehow beats it. Then everyone will think it's possible.
[Before you flame me, I'm not alone on this issue. Also, if you want to flame me, look around and see why someone like me has to become an advocate.]
Get your Unix fortune now!
I'm about half way through the book.
Von Neuman plays a role in the book.
Von Neuman invented the min-max algorithm which
is widely used in artificial intelligence game
playing programs such as chess. Nash's equilibrium
point is supposed to be a powerful generalisation
on min-max, but I don't see it often used in A.I. programs.
Also in the book Von Neuman flips off Nash as being a pompous grad student.
Nash gets the final laugh when he WINS the Nobel prize
and Von Neuman doesn't.
The founders of Artificial Intelligence John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky
were classmates of Nash and have cameos in the book.
Later in his career Nash becomes something of
a computer hacker, but I haven't reached that part of
the book yet.
Both the book and movie are rare lterary depictions of grad school life.
They capture the stresses of science/engineering nerds.
Also things have changed since the 1950s and now,
but not as much as you'd think.
Mathematicians have also had a long history of mental disorders; as my supervisor once said, "you can count on your fingers the number of sane great 20th century mathematicians". (which is just slightly worrying...)
I think it's worrying that a mathematician still needs to use his fingers to count...
The problem is that the book itself is full of evidence that this picture of genius is simplistic in the extreme. While Nash was there, Princeton was full of first-rate intellects --- geniuses by any yardstick --- who shared nothing of Nash's sociopathic nature. Einstein was reserved and eccentric, but good-natured. Von Neumann was articulate and cosmopolitan, and heavily involved in politics. Godel (before his paranoia set in) was sophisticated and urbane. Each of these men easily outrank Nash. None of them shared his tendency to strut around proclaiming his own genius or his habit of sneering at the worthlessness of other minds. And yet both the film and the book push all the old myths of genius. When I was a grad student at Princeton the main consequence of this myth, as far as I could tell, was that everyone had to put up with jerks who thought they could induce genius in themselves by being an asshole to everyone else.
John Nash never received a Nobel Prize. The only "real" Nobel prizes are the ones in chemistry, peace, literature, physics, and medicine/physiology. Those were the ones established by Alfred Nobel in his will, and first awarded in 1901. The Nobel prize for Economics was established about 70 years later, in 1968. The Bank of Sweden created a foundation to award, "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It was basically a marketting ploy to celebrate it's 300th anniversary. :)
While the selection process is done similarly (the Economics award is done by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, which also awards the prizes for chemistry and physics), the awards are quite distinct. Some physicians will complain bitterly if one mentions the Nobel Prize in Economics, since economics is not a "real" science.
Disclaimer: I read the book a couple of years ago, so much of this is from memory.
Irony: People who discover the book because of the movie tend to be more critical of the movie.
I thoroughly enjoyed both the book and the movie. Sure I was aware of things that got left out, but as we all know from for example LOTR, when movies are made from books choices have to be made. I really appreciate the way them movie chose to emphasize the importance of relationships in Nash's li fe, as troublesome as they may have been at times.
Nash's bisexuality: The book shows this ambiguously, not as a well-developed preference. It reflects Nash's narcissism more than anything else.
Nash's divorce: Although they did separate for a short time after the divorce, they lived together for 25 years before getting remarried. When they were remarried last summer, Nash referred to the event as a retraction of the divorce, like a journal would retract a publication error.
Terry Gross interviewed Sylvia Nasar on last night's Fresh Air (Real Audio). She was strongly supportive of the choices made while writing the screenplay. She suggested that if more emphasis had been put on Nash's sexuality or political views, it would have detracted from the more important stuff, ie, Nash's lifelong relationship with Alicia and his descent into schizophrenia.
However I felt Sylvia Nasar's defense of the film's intentional disregard of John Nash's sexual history to be disingenuous. Yes he may be bi or gay or straight or it may have been a mistake or experimentation or whatever but the arrest had a profound affect on his life, one certainly relevant to the film.
Frankly the author lost a great deal of creditability with me when she broke down in tears describing Nash's recent remarriage to his wife and kept babbling about how wonderful and beautiful a person he is. While biographers doubtless have opinions on their subjects I've never heard one get so maudlin or express such overt and unconditional adulation.
It will be interesting to someday compare Nasar's Nash biography with another perhaps more objective one. In the meantime both this book and the film appear deeply flawed by their attempts to present overly sympathetic views of their subject.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I think that's a very unfair reading of Nasar's writing.
She makes it clear throughout the book that many of Nash's colleagues were also geniuses, and that there were all very different from him and from each other. Some were also assholes; some were extraordinarily generous. She gives them their credit both as being geniuses and as not all fitting the same "genius" mold.
Nasar does make the argument that Nash's particular genius and his particular personality were tied together, which is almost certainly true. Certainly Nash was a driven, competitive, egotistical fellow -- and that had a great deal to do with what problems he chose to tackle (usually the ones that would grab the most attention if solved), and how he tackled them (angrily, obsessively, jealous of others working on the same problem).
I didn't read that as anything other than a description of Nash. It is one model of one genius, and certainly Nasar does not present it as a model for all geniuses everywhere. I think your reaction may be based on a (very reasonable!) general irritation with the myth of the genius, and what you read into the book based on that irritation.
As for the movie, I haven't seen it and can't comment on it.